Welcome To The Classical Grammy Cutbacks

Riccardo Muti and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra won "Best Classical Album" last year, a category that has now been eliminated from the Grammy Awards.
Todd Rosenberg/CSO
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Todd Rosenberg/CSO

Riccardo Muti and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra won "Best Classical Album" last year, a category that has now been eliminated from the Grammy Awards.

Todd Rosenberg/CSO

As we wrote back in April, Grammy categories were whittled down substantially for 2012, and with the announcement last night of this year's nominees, we can see the results of those changes. Among the deletions were Best Classical Crossover Album, merged vocal and chamber/small group music categories and – most importantly – the dissolution of the Best Classical Album category.

The drop of 31 categories overall, which was made without a general vote by the academy's 21,000 members — and which prompted a lawsuit filed by four prominent Latin jazz musicians as well as the formation of a watchdog group — has diminished the presence and perceived value of specialty genres like classical music.

When all these categories were dropped, the Recording Academy suggested that if they were indeed really great, worthy albums from genres like classical would somehow find their way to the big-dog mainstream categories like Album of the Year. Gee, who could have predicted that Gustavo Dudamel or John Adams would be edged out in favor of Katy Perry or Bruno Mars?

Here, I should admit some amount of insiderly knowledge of the process. For several years, I was a voting member of the Grammys and also served on one of the small committees that judges one of the few categories not voted on by the general membership. In addition, my husband was involved in the creation of several Grammy-winning recordings and produced several other albums that were nominated for Grammy Awards.

As for this year's actual classical nominations, there were few surprises. Naxos and its huge roster of distributed labels continues to dominate the process; Among the 35 classical-category nominees (excluding Engineering and Producer of the Year, Classical), 19 — more than half — came from Naxos and its distribution roster. (A bit of historical number-crunching: Last year, 24 out of 55 nominated recordings came from the same Naxos well.) And as in recent years, several of the nominated recordings aren't available on CD at all — for example, the Gustavo Dudamel-led Brahms Fourth Symphony, nominated for Best Orchestral Performance, is sold as a digital download only, while three of the five albums in contention for Best Opera Recording are DVDs.

We'd like to know what you think. If it still existed, would Best Classical Album continue to hold meaning for you as a fan? And of all the recordings released this past year, which would you have nominated for Best Classical Album? Let us know in the comments section.

Here are the classical nominees; the Grammy Awards will be announced Feb. 12 in Los Angeles.

Deceptive Cadence covers the world of classical music. Hosted by Tom Huizenga and Anastasia Tsioulcas, it's an open space for discussion, discovery, music listening and news. Want to know more? Read our introductory post. Have a question or comment? Contact us.